Urban Voices / The Medea  Project: Theatre for incarcerated women in partnership with Joburg Correctional Services will be hosting the following:

A Three week theatre training programme  for theatre  and community/social services  practitioners   specifically geared for working with  women offenders/inmates  at Joburg  Female Correctional Centre.

Rhodessa Jones, San Franciso based,  award winning actor and director  from Cultural Oddyssey and The Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women –will be conducting the three week training programme at the  Joburg Correctional Centre.  Ms Jones has worked over 20 years with incarcerated women in various jails and correctional centres around the world.  For more on Ms Rhodessa Jones /Medea Project check out : (http://www.culturalodyssey.org/v2/aboutus/)

Schedule at  Joburg Female Correctional Centre: Diepkloof /opposite South Gate (Popularly known as “Sun City”)

Three hours a day – Monday – Thursday  – October 12 – November 3 2011

9 AM – 12 PM

Primary Goal of Residency:

Activities of Residency: Only open to Women participants:

1.Teach and train female poets, musicians, choreographers, writers, directors, specific correctional service staff,  actors and community workers/social services,  to conduct workshops and rehearsals with the female offenders in The Medea Theatre  Project Process.

This will  be done in combination with the rehearsing of the female offenders in the production “Serious Fun at Sun City” for future presentations.

Requirements:

Artists and  correctional staff,  must be interested in working with Ms Jones to deepen their sense of the process of working with incarcerated women.  Rhodessa  Jones will continue to be the overall director of the process so that it has a focus and style of how the work is made.

NB: If outside participants  cannot be present for the  entire session, we can accommodate the participants on the days that suit them within the schedule above.

However a basic letter of why you want to be involved in the process as well as a basic resume ,ID copy,  days that you are able to attend , needs to be emailed to :Roshnie Moonsammy , email: info@artsexchange.co.za before the 27 September 2011  and we will notify you about the success of the application. There is a limit on the number of participants and all selected participants will  have to cleared with correctional services.

Rhodessa Jones

Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco acclaimed performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, singer, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Founder and Director of the award winning Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women which is a performance workshop that is designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women. This is Rhodessa’s  fifth  visit to South Africa hosted by the Urban Voices and The State Theatre. In July 2005 she began workshops inside several prisons and also performed at the Market Theatre. In October of 2011  she returns to Johannesburg, South Africa to conduct residency activities inside the Joburg Central Correctional Centre popularly known as ‘Sun City’.

In December 2007 Rhodessa received a United States Artist (USA) Fellowship to support her work. Ms. Jones is currently collaborating with the Women’s HIV Programme at UC Medical Center conducting workshops and residency activities that will lead to a world premier performance in 2009.  The programme will increase the personal empowerment of a large group of predominately African American women with HIV.  In June Rhodessa gave the Keynote Address at Chicago’s DePaul University for the Race, Sex, and Power Conference, and in May she gave the Keynote Address at New World Theatre’s Intersections Conference in Amherst, Massachusettes.  In March 2008 Rhodessa conducted a week-long residency at Denison University in Granville, Ohio delivering a Keynote Address and performing The Love Project. In addition, The Love Project was also performed at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia in March, and at the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in August 2007.

During the month of September 2007 Rhodesssa was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland for the Women’s Studies Department. She was also the Artistic Director of the San Francisco International Theater Festival that took place in the spring of 2007.  During July and April 2007 Rhodessa was Artist-in-Residence at the University of West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago. In March 2007 Rhodessa directed Lysistrata for the African American Shakespeare Company. In June 2006 she directed a public reading for Eve Ensler’s, VDAY: Until the Violence Stops Festival. The performance at Lincoln Center featured Rosie O’Donnell, Shirley Knight, Phylicia Rashad, and Rosario Dawson. Ms. Jones is always in demand to speak about the Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women and her experiences.

Rhodessa has been on two panels in March and April 2006 including one for the U.C Davis Law Symposium entitled, The Making of A Criminal and the other, for Stanford University, entitled Women in Prison. Ms. Jones was also the keynote speaker for the Visions in Feminism 2006 Conference, held at the American University in Washington D.C. during May. During November Rhodessa was invited by the Malafestival to conduct workshops and performances in a Turin, Italy prison with women inmates. In the Fall of 2005 Rhodessa was Scholar/Activist-in-Residence at Intercollegiate Women’s Studies of the Claremont Colleges. In August Rhodessa was the Keynote Speaker for the Annual Conference of the National Association for Drama Therapy at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Rhodessa’s published works include: A Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts. Oakland: New Village Press, 2005; Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001; Rhodessa Jones: Theater for a New Millennium. Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance in the Twentieth Century. Theater Communications Group (1999); Rhodessa Jones: Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women. Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Plays 1996.

Enquiries: email: info@artsexchange.co.za

Tel 011 726 6916 /0832720285

www.urbanvoices.co.za

Lemn Sissay!  Theatre Direct from the Uk !   Dont Miss it! Only  a Few Days left: “Something Dark” by award winning poet and actor at the Market Theatre, Newtown: Joburg :  Ends 28th November 2010

Something Dark – special offer

Special offer for a limited period only. Ticket prices are R60, applicable for all shows Tuesdays to Sundays, commencing Friday 5 November.

This autumn Lemn Sissay returns to the Market Theatre with his solo performance work, Something Dark, which tells the story of his experiences growing up in the UK care system. This is the story that he has always wanted to tell.

He didn’t meet a black person until he was ten years old. He didn’t know a black person until he was seventeen years old. He has become one of the most famous living poets in Britain. This is the incredible back story of his life, his monumental search not for his family but in many ways for himself.

Something Dark tells the story of how he was taken away from his mother, of her attempts to get him back from the British social services system and of their disastrous attempts at care. Stolen from his family, denied his African heritage. It’s as if they even tried to stop him looking in mirrors so that he wouldn’t ask – WHO AM I. But he did and it was the beginning of the end of the lies and deception. This had been a childhood built on duplicity and untruths and only Lemn’s courage and determination could free him from these false beginnings and help him to find the darkest hidden truths in light of his search. Something Dark.

A heartrending story of the power of a young African boy lost to his family, exiled from himself: a stolen son of the continent. This is his triumphant story. Taking the audience on an emotional journey from traumatic beginnings; through the adventures of discovering his true family will he finally arrive at a place of reconciliation or wreckage?

Something Dark is the powerful testimony fuelled with passion and hope.

What the Media say :

A triumph * * * * * – The Scotsman

The sheer intimacy of poet Lemn Sissay’s performance underpins the power of this monologue - The Stage

He seems illuminated from within, gives an adrenaline-fuelled performance. The actor’s glorious smile and his flair for turning personal struggle into stand-up and poetry is effortlessly entertaining. - The Guardian unlimited

A big hearted pleasure - Time Out  (critics choice)

South African poets on the importance of poetry and poetry festivals.

Click here to view the video

We head into Johannesburg prison to watch critically acclaimed American poet, spoken-word artist and actor Lemon Andersen perform for the male inmates. Andersen, who is here for the annual Urban Voices Theatre and Poetry Festival, was able to share powerful personal experiences, which includes being an ex-prisoner himself.

Click here to view the video